Before automation, States Logistics Services employees working an eight-hour shift could offload only two or three truck containers. Now the robots can do four to five containers per shift with Contoro Robotics. The facility handles over 50 truck-trailer containers per month, and two or three employees, depending on the product, were previously needed to unload cases and load them onto pallets.
According to Jesse Sevilla, Director of Sales and Operations at States Logistics Services Inc., the company had always unloaded containers manually before noticing issues in the quality of labor after 2020, as fewer people wanted to spend workdays inside hot, cramped trailers. "The need for change wasn’t just about throughput," said Sevilla, "but also the well-being of our employees. Safety is a top priority with us, and at the time, we were experiencing a significant amount of health insurance claims regarding back strain."
In 2023 the company, which employs more than 800 people across multiple facilities, started to explore technology alternatives and partnered with Contoro Robotics. The result was a KUKA KR IONTEC industrial robotic arm equipped with Contoro's AdaptAI software to unload floor-loaded trailers automatically. Contoro fitted the robot with cameras and sensors that collect data on wall locations, box positions, stacking and sizes. This data creates a virtual environment for AdaptAI, which generates hundreds of optimized, collision-free paths based on box size, location, condition and weight. Contoro's DuoGrasp gripper handles cases from two sides at once. Once a trailer is positioned at a dock, the robot uses AI-guided vision to pick up cases and place them on a powered conveyor that moves them out of the trailer, and a secondary robot then places them onto pallets that are wrapped and moved to storage or outbound staging.
Refrigerated containers, whose floors are grooved for air circulation, were a challenge. Contoro rethought the mobile base and conveyor, altering the conveyor's wheels, and edited the perception array to suit the walls and air handling in reefer trailers. The solution is delivered as robotics-as-a-service with predictable per-trailer pricing, which shifts costs from capital expenditure to operating expenditure. The case study says the system has reduced physical strain on employees and created a more consistent unloading process, with improved efficiency, reduced turnover and lower labor and injury-related costs.